I don't remember what Jon Stewart was on about the first time I ever watched him host The Daily Show, but I do recall a) laughing my ass off and b) thinking it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. What I never imagined at the time was the place Mr. Stewart would end up assuming in the American conversation.
That stature was confirmed this week when he announced he would be leaving the show later in 2015 after 16 years at his desk. It was a news flash of enough significance to largely overshadow a report the same day that NBC was suspending anchor Brian Williams for six months for lying about the circumstances surrounding a helicopter trip he took during the Iraq war.
Mr. Williams is the top dog at the top-rated news show on network television in the United States. Mr. Stewart is a comic who fronts a "fake" cable news show. Yet somehow, along the way, he became one of the most trusted and admired voices in America.
Mr. Stewart, 52, is not the first entertainer to make a living skewering the rich and powerful. Late-night talk show hosts from Jack Parr to Jay Leno have been doing it for years. But their corny jokes and predictable punchlines usually played off easy, superficial typecasts. Sure, they could have an effect – it was never good for a politician when the late-night shows had you in their sights – but any broader impact was ultimately as shallow and ineffectual as the humour itself.
The Daily Show under Mr. Stewart's direction was different. He used new forms of satire to shine an often blistering spotlight on the foibles and hypocrisies of political and media elites alike. Free of the constraints that govern mainstream news organizations, he was able in his "fake" news show to be far more candid about events of the day. In the process, he often got closer the truth.
His B.S. detector is as finely honed as the most decorated journalist's. The way he takes down his targets is brilliant, often adopting their own confused lines of logic – with a smirk – before dropping all pretenses and exploding in rage. "Are you insane?" he'll finally ask, eyes bulging, leaning forward on his fake anchor desk for extra effect.
His show came along at the same time current-event debate programs on cable and network television were proliferating. For Mr. Stewart, it was manna from heaven. For years, there wasn't a show that went by when he didn't use material from CNN's Crossfire or Fox's The O'Reilly Report, among others, to comment on their desperate, lowest-common-denominator pursuit of ratings.
One of my all-time favourite Jon Stewart moments was when he appeared on Bill O'Reilly's program to debate, among other things, a position that the bullying, right-wing bloviator had taken regarding a controversial rapper who had been invited to the White House. Mr. Stewart absolutely destroyed Mr. O'Reilly on his own home turf. "There is a selective outrage machine here at Fox that pettifogs only when it suits the narrative that suits them," Mr. Stewart declared at one point. Oh, how I cheered at home.
Mr. Stewart has never hid his liberal bias, but never shied from going after progressives either. Everyone was fair game. He fed off the cognitive dissonance that has come to define U.S. politics, often using video montages showing legislators controverting things they'd said earlier, sometimes earlier the same day. To watch it was maddening and hilarious at the same time.
He is a patriot whose show is ultimately an appeal for a better tomorrow. As David Carr of The New York Times put it this week: "Again and again, his indictment of politicians and media figures was less about what they were and more about what they failed to be."
Given the news of the week it is hard not to juxtapose the careers of Mr. Williams and Mr. Stewart – Mr. Williams the suave, buttoned-down reflection of a corporate television culture that often filters and curates the news at the expense of depth and analysis and Mr. Stewart, the cool, whip-smart wise guy, who uses humour to expose the hidebound traditional media's inability to find the deeper meaning in current events.
Mr. Stewart once said that his mandate was to entertain, not inform. But in 16 years, he has managed to do both extremely well. And when he finally does say goodbye, he is going to be missed in a way Mr. Williams never will be.
Gary Mason